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Lillis sentenced to 6 years 11 months in prison

Today Eamonn Lillis was sentenced in the Central Criminal Court to 7 years (reduced by 1 month to account for time already served) for the manslaughter of his wife Celine Cawley.

The decision of Mr Justice Barry White was based on a position that the appropriate sentence, without any mitigating factors, for the offence would be 10 years. In coming to this conclusion he had considered the prison sentences handed down in the Wayne Oâ€™Donoghue (4 years) and Linda Mulhall (15 years) cases particularly with regard to the coverup.

Mitigating factors in this case included the previous good character of Eamonn Lillis, the evidence this was out of character and his call to the emergency services and attempt to resuscitate his wife. Mr Justice Whyte however, noted on this point “That is the only decent act you committed on that morning.” given he then went on to systematically lie about the events of that morning and blame someone else for the attack. Other negative elements were the time he took to cover up the fight was the effect of the crime on the family members, including of course his own daughter. The lack of clear remorse for what had happened, a lack of an offer of a plea to manslaughter were particularly notable:

“Your expression of remorse rings hollow to me and I consider it to be self-serving in light of the circumstances of the case.”

The sentence is at the upper end for a manslaughter case.

Mr Justice Whyte went on to strongly criticise the media for their coverage of the case. He said the media media’s behaviour had been “an affront to human dignity” and called for their privacy to be respected. It is clear that whilst the media serve an important role in ensuring that justice is carried out in public, that does not mean that media has a right to invade the privacy of participants in a trial.

Previously the Court of Appeal has criticised the photographing of the accused in the case of DPP v Davis in 2002. Indeed, the Supreme Court in Re R. Ltd [1989] IR 126 ruled that “the administration of justice in public [simply] require[s] that the doors of the court must be open so that members of the general public may come and see for themselves that justice is done.” Any claim therefore by the media that they are acting as the guardians of justice by staking out the home of Eamonn Lillis, or by following him and his daughter on a trip into Dublin, would clearly not meet the court’s view of what is protected in a case like this.

An appeal in the case is expected based in relation to the sentence imposed and possibly in relation to the Judges summing up to the jury.